Just Some Projects

For those of you who follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you’ve probably seen all these pictures (or most of them). But I thought I’d share some of my latest projects, since we’ve been too busy packing/meeting with friends/organizing/cleaning to cook or even consider turning on my oven.

I found this project from Pinterest on how to make a t-shirt rag rug. We are moving to an apartment with all hardwood floors, so I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone–make a cute little throw rug, and get rid of some t-shirts at the same time.

The tutorial I used is absolutely perfect, so I won’t even try making my own. Just go here to see it.

The cats are in love with this rug.

Next I refinished an old dresser that we’ve had for a few years and have just been putting up with.

I used a bunch of different resources to figure out what to do. The basic gist of it was:

Removed the hardware and filled the holes with sawdust+wood glue (can also just use wood filler).

Sanded the whole thing down, using a DeWalt random-orbit sander I borrowed from a friend (which worked so well! I sanded the entire dresser in a few hours) with minimal arm soreness. Cleaned off all the dust.

Primed with a latex primer (one coat). We bought an “oops” can that someone rejected that was a light gray color for $5.00! Score.

Painted with a latex water-based paint (Valspar in London Coach)–three coats. I lightly sanded between each paint layer with 220-grit sandpaper and cleaned the dust off.

Finished with three layers of water-based (so it doesn’t yellow) polyurethane (Minwax). I sanded between each of these layers as well, but not the last.

Fritz added new hardware, which we changed the placement of.

Sounds time consuming, but I just moved the dresser to the basement and did one layer of paint a day. I also let it “cure” for a long weekend before moving it back inside and putting anything on it.

I have to say, the finish feels really strong and awesome–you can easily wipe it clean and I’m not really nervous to scratch it. It just feels so solid, and not at all tacky.

My last project is the antique dental cabinet I found in my landlord’s basement. I knew it was some kind of medical cabinet, but you can imagine how happy I was to find out it belonged to a dentist–and even happier when my landlord said she’d be happy for me to take it off her hands (for free!).

I had to clean off a thick and really disgusting layer of grime and sticky tape reside, but now it looks a million times better. There’s some bald spots where the paint must have been removed by the tape that some smartie-pants must have used on it at one point.

At some point I’m gonna try to match the paint and buy new hardware for this too.

I’ve had lots of fun making some new stuff, and I’m sure we will attempt a lot more projects after we move at the end of this month.

And of course–Happy Mother’s Day to my amazing mother!

I can’t imagine life without my mom. For more pictures of my absolutely gorgeous mother, check out this birthday post from last year!

Renee

My boys have an old grungy dresser that is super sturdy & great, but looks gross. I totally hate the hardware & placement, and have been putting off re-finishing it for that reason. I never thought of filling in the holes & just making new ones! Brilliant! And now I have a good summer project